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Freemasonry
W Bro Dr. Tejinder Singh Rawal
District Grand Mentor,
District Grand Lodge of Bombay
tsrawal@tsrawal.com
Stonemasons were clearly the elite of the labour force, had secret customs and
marks and would have attracted some of the brightest non-educated recruits.
There were no written credentials those days, since not many of the workmen
would know how to read and write. For executing the work the stonemasons
were required to travel from place to place, and the guilds developed an
elaborate secret method of recognition, not only to recognise a mason, but to
examine him to find out his degree of proficiency and skill in the trade.
King Athelstan: Legend next informs us that Athelstan, having subjugated most
of the minor kingdoms of England, gathered together many skilled masons and
established York Rite Masonry in 926 AD by granting them a Royal Charter.
Athelstan’s importance to Stonemasons is mentioned in both the Regius and
Cooke Manuscripts.
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object in the sky, Venus. Book of Enoch, discovered amongst the Dead Sea
Scrolls from the Qumran and from which many higher Masonic Orders draw their
inspiration, explains the scientific principles by which those earliest
observatories (or Uriels Machines) operate. Many tribes maintained Enochian
and Noachide customs for centuries and when the Enochian-Zadokite priests
were expelled from Jerusalem in 70 AD by the Romans, they hid their scrolls and
treasures deep under the ruins of Solomons Temple. Knights Templar families led
by Hugues de Payens, would return in 1140 AD to dig them up and retrieve
them.
The Knights Templars were effectively extinguished on Friday 13th October 1307
by King Philippe of France who, broke at the time, stole their lands and
possessions.
King Solomon’s Temple : Freemasonry draws much imagery from the history
and construction of King Solomon’s Temple (945 BC) by masons from the
Phoenician city of Tyre, and Masonic ritual books rely heavily on this Biblical
story. Many of the Masonic words in vogue today can be traced to the Egyptian
language of this era. The virtues of truth and justice were said by them to be “on
the square”. Confucius in 500BC referred to the squareness of actions; even
Aristotle in 350 BC associates square actions with honest dealings. The square
and its symbolism is very old and interestingly has continued to maintain
consistency of meaning over the centuries.
Regius Manuscript held in the British Museum is the oldest genuine record of
Masonic relevance and was written in 1390 AD. Its author was probably a priest
and this manuscript takes the form of an historical and instructional poem. “So
Mote it be” is first quoted in this text, which has been extensively quoted in all
Masonic rituals. Cooke Manuscript (also in the British Museum) was written by a
Speculative mason in 1450. This is an important document because many
current Masonic usages (eg the Constitutions written by Anderson in 1723) have
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obviously borrowed heavily from its content, which includes reference to the
seven Liberal Arts and Sciences and the building of Solomon’s Temple.
London Company of Freemasons was granted Arms in 1473 and their coat
included three castles and compasses. They have been recently incorporated
within Metropolitan Grand Lodge of London’s arms upon its inauguration in 2003.
In 1583, a William Schaw was appointed by King James VI as Master of the Work
and Warden General. In 1598 he issued the first of the now famous Schaw
Statutes. More importantly for Freemasons today, Schaw drew up a second
Statute in 1599 which carries the first veiled reference to the existence of
esoteric knowledge within the craft of stone masonry. It also reveals that The
Mother Lodge of Scotland, Lodge Kilwinning No. 0 existed at that time. His
regulations required all lodges to keep written records, meet at specific times
and test members in the Art of Memory. As a consequence he is regarded by
some as the founder of modern Freemasonry as we know it today.
Ashmole a renowned author and scholar was a friend of Robert Boyle, Sir Robert
Moray, Christopher Wren, Isaac Newton and Dr John Wilkins. They all were early
members of the Royal Society, which began its life as the Invisible College, an
organization led by Francis Bacon, before securing a Royal Charter from Charles
II in 1662. Invisible College met at a place which carried lots of Masonic
emblems. Invisible College was perhaps the invisible face of masonry, or if not
that, it was being run by the same set of people who were running the
Freemasonry. To get a flavour of the times in mid Seventeenth Century England,
bear in mind that slavery was still universal. Galileo was in deep trouble with the
Catholic Church by insisting that the earth revolved around the sun, Bacon’s
works were banned by Rome Despite the risks, Freemasonry was spreading
quickly.
Freemasonry was in transition at this point from pure Operative Masonry to Non
Operative or Speculative Freemasonry., England copied the Scottish Masonic
structure .Interestingly, even in English lodges Constitutions were written by a
Scotsman, Anderson.
Little is known of Masonic activity for seventy years after Ashmole’s initiation in
1646. In 1717, four London lodges formed The Premier Grand Lodge of England.
The date was St John The Baptists Day, 24 June 1717.
The third degree: Till 1730, Masonic ritual were being learned parrot-fashion
until Prichard’s exposure entitled Masonry Dissected was published. Ritual prior
to that point followed a two-degree system simplified symbolism and the Old
Charges. This two-tier degree system was expanded when Desaguliers (Grand
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Master in 1719) wrote the Third Degree and grew again when Laurence Dermott
introduced the Fourth (ie Royal Arch) Degree in 1752. The words “hele” and
“conceal” and “points of fellowship” are both found in the Edinburgh Register
House Manuscript of 1696; “Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth”, made its
appearance in print in a pamphlet printed in London in 1724. The word Tyler
probably came into usage around this time and is thought to be derived from the
French Tailleur, ie one who cuts.
In 1731 the first American Grand Lodge obtained its Constitution, The Grand
Lodge of Pennsylvania, making it the first Grand Lodge in the United States of
America. Over the next 100 years, Freemasonry attracted many leading lights
forming the cream of the intellectual and scientific establishment including Sir
Robert Walpole, Robert Burns, Mozart, Darwin, Frederick the Great and from the
USA, Franklin, and Washington.
Ancients vs. Modern: Premier Grand Lodge made drastic changes to the ritual
and passwords and the creation of a third degree out of the previous two-degree
ritual system. Some traditionalists were so upset; they broke away and set up
splinter groups. A significant group broke away in 1751 and was called The
Grand Lodge of England, nicknamed The Antients, Those whom they left behind
in The Premier Grand Lodge of England were nicknamed The “Moderns”.
From this time onwards, new degrees and rituals proliferated which fuelled fierce
argument between the “Antients” and the “Moderns”. French Freemason, JM
Ragon estimated that at one point, there were over 1400 separate Masonic
degrees An example of dispute between these two Grand lodges would be that
the Antients worked a four-degree system whilst the Moderns only recognised a
three Degree system. To the irritation of the Moderns, they often found their
members sympathetic to the fourth or Royal Arch Degree, to the point where it
became regarded as an extension to the Third Degree.
In 2003 with the Inauguration of the Metropolitan Grand Lodge of London 50,000
London Freemasons have a separate identity from United Grand Lodge of
England and enabled UGLE to concentrate on its worldwide affairs and duties.